Attended the 34th ICANN meeting and Open Source India Week at New Delhi… details later!

Located on the banks of Buriganaga river and very near to Sadarghat Launch Terminal, it was the residential palace of the Nawabs of Dhaka. Now turned into a museum, it has 31 rooms and 23 galleries displaying portraits, furnitures and household articles and utensils used by the Nawabs.

Closed on Thursday, the museum is open from 10:30 to 17:30 on weekdays, and 15:00 to 19:30 on Friday during summer time (April – September). During winter (October – March), it’s open from 9:30 to 16:30 on weekdays and 15:00 to 19:30 on Friday. Go ahead and spend an hour or two at Ahsan Manzil and enjoy it’s beauty only in return of a 2 taka entry fee.

Check out more pictures of Ahsan Manzil.

Setting up the Khulna center was my last assignment from Relief International. I’ve been working for this international aid agency since May 2005, and I finally realised that it’s time to quit. I resigned last month, and September 31st was officially my last day at work. For last two weeks, I’ve been helping them out as a volunteer, and mentoring my assistant Alamgir whom I’ve nominated for my position.

My work at Khulna took only few hours, so I got a good chance to roam around the city. I visited the zero point, Khulna University campus, Khulna court, the “Jail Khana Ghaat” on the banks of Rupsa river, the New Market, Meena Bazar, and Daily Purbanchal office.

The Khulna Meena Bazar is almost the same size of the Dhaka one, but has one third of the products that our one has. I went there to buy Playboy deodorant for myself but couldn’t find it.

Overall, it was a good trip. I boarded at Hotel Royal as usual and I’m giving them 8.5 out 10 for their service. No beer this time since it’s Ramadan.

I checked in at Hotel Royal, the best hotel in the region. Their services were of international standards, but surprisingly the room rent wasn’t too high. The room was well groomed with international standard fixtures, the bed was comfy, the room service was quick, and the room attendants appeared well trained. They have a bar too.

I roamed around the town, visited the New Market, but I wasn’t too impressed. Despite being the divisional head quarter of the division, the city was much smaller than I expected. It’s not too developed either. There were handful of cars in the road, and the buildings looked pale. Load shedding is a major problem of the city dwellers. Khulna city had nothing that can be compared to Dhaka, not even with port city Chittagong. Just imagine what kind of city it is where the shutters of shops get closed by 9 PM!

Just a few observations: 1. The dialect of Khulna people isn’t too difficult to understand. 2. The rikshaw fair is pretty cheap. 3. People of Khulna seems to be too obsessed with Hazrat Khan Jahan Ali, the 15 century Islamic religious leader and a ruler. Roads, schools, shops, buildings, companies, and a lot of installations are named after him.

It was my first trip to Joypurhat, a North Bengal district 380 km from Dhaka. It was infact my first trip to North Bengal as well, the vast region on the other side of Jamuna river.

Since there isn’t any AC bus service available on this route, I had to travel by Hanif Paribahan. I listened to my crazy collection of trance music through out the journey, so I didn’t get too bored. More over, crossing the 4.8 km Jamuna bridge (which is 110 kilometers northwest of Dhaka) was exciting. To date, it’s the longest brigde in South Asia, and 11th longest in the world.

It took 8 long hours to reach Joypurhat. My destination was further 15 kilometers from the town, a village in Pachbibi upa-zila. Pachbibi is completely an under developed rural area, with rikshaw vans as the only means of transport. It was quite surprsing for me see only a handful of real rickshaws around. The Indian border and Hili land port was near to where I stayed, I was informed that a lot of villages are involved with smuggling.

There’s a good number of indigenous population in the area, making it a heaven for a lot of local and international NGOs. A Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) mission school is also in the area, and I was told by my guide that they receives a huge funding from USA. I was told that they have their own backup generators, water supply system, air-conditioned rooms, computers lab with 50+ PCs and so on. I wanted to visit them, but couldn’t manage the time to do so.

An interesting point to mention before I end. If you go to a tea stall in Joypurhat, then this is how they’ll serve your tea: they’ll fill two-third of the cup with milk, and then one-third with tea! Should we call it it tea with milk, or milk with tea, that remains the question.

We organized a 5-day long Teacher Professional Development (TPD) training at Central Gono Bidyalaya at Sonargoan. The training provided 18 school teachers with intermediate-level IT skills while simultaneously teaching active educational methodologies. Over the course of the training, participants learned to use Fedora Core 5, OOo Writer, OOo Impress, OOo Calc, Nvu, KolourPaint, The GIMP, along with digital camera operation and the Internet. Food, accommodation and the training itself was provided free of cost.

On the entrance to Sonargoan Rajbari is the famous sculpture of bull wagon by Jainul Abedin, which symolises toil and struggle. Jainul Abedin has always been one my favourite artist and I took a chance to get a pic of mine infront of the sculpture:

Just a few steps ahead to the left is the 2-storied palace, or the Rajbari, which is now being used as a museum:

The palace has over 100 small rooms, and it’s completely like a maze inside. All the rooms are of same size and design, and now they are home to different cultural and architectural masterpieces collected from different parts of Bangladesh. I was told by my guide that this palace was used by few rulers, including the Hindu Jamidars who ruled during the British regime. It’s open for visitors from 10:00 to 17:00 everyday, except for Thursday.

Brief history of Sonargoan, as told by Dr. Abu Sayeed:

Sonargaon, which literally means “golden village” in Bengali, was the capital of the Banga province or Eastern Bengal, which was one of the three political units of this territory during the Delhi Imperial rule. In 1338 Fakhr-al-Din-Mubarak seized the provincial government of Sonargaon and declared himself independent from Delhi and was the first independent Sultan of Bengal.

In 1352, he was overthrown by the Sultan of Gaur Ilyas Shah, and from this time Sonargaon formed a part of the independent kingdom of united Bengal until the advent of the Moguls (1575).

In the reign of Akbar, it was the chief city of Isa Khan, who maintained his independence for several years. After Isa Khan’s death it became a part of the Great Mogul Empire. The decline of Sonargaon started with the establishment of the Mogul capital in Dhaka in 1608, and with the conquest of the kingdom of Isa Khan by the forces of Islam Khan in 1611 it became one of the Sarkers of the Bengal Subah, losing its former prestige forever.

The history of Sonargaon for the next two hundred years until the establishment of the commercial belt of the East India Company in Panam is still unknown to us. The colonial city of Panam came into being in the nineteenth century and continued to flourish till the end of the Second World War.

Stuffs that happened this time:

- Mr. Faruque was me
- We took Jack’s car (he’s in Australia now)
- Akram was fired due to his poor performance at work

My cell phone’s battery died yesterday night, and I couldn’t recharge it since I forgot to bring the charger! Big mistake. Sadly, my laptop’s battery is about to die in a while… can’t recharge it since I left the “round-pin” converter at office. Who knows, after a while I might find that the camera’s battery is dead as well!

Here’s what I’m going to talking about in the training:

• Overview of computer software and hardware:
  • Capability of computers
  • Hardware and peripheral devices
  • System and application software

• PC configuration and maintenance:
  • CMOS/BIOS setup
  • OS installation
  • Driver settings and installation
  • Tips and tricks to keep the machines running smoothly
  • Virus protection
  • Backup procedure

• Overview on networking
  • Advantages of a networked environment
  • Topologies, LAN, WAN, switching, routing, cables, sockets
  • Peer to peer networking concept
  • Security issues, firewall
  • Practical session
  • Connecting RJ-45 plugs
  • Hub/switch settings and installation
  • Connecting PCs with 10 base T cables
  • Sharing peripheral devices

• Overview on Internet:
  • WWW, e-mail, bulletin board, relay chat
  • Connection types
  • Netethics

I gotta sleep early tonight, the training starts at 10:00 tomorrow!